Ming explains when to get your child assessed by a speech therapist. By age 2, kids should use two-word phrases and answer simple questions. By 3, they should manage three-word phrases and answer who/where questions. If your child isn't hitting these milestones, seek an evaluation.
Hey guys, this is ming here from agentsofspeech.com today I want to talk about when you should see a speech therapist for your child. And I get questions from parents every day. There's one or two parents who come up to me and the private messages or email or whatnot stating how old their child is, what's going on at home, the situation, and then they ask me, oh, what should I do? Right. And most often, like 80 times, 80% of the time, I would say go see a speech therapist. Right. I just want to get this clear and out of the way. And if more parents see this, that's great. So if you can share this, it'd be very helpful for me. So I'm just going to go straight up and tell you that the best time to get a speech and language assessment is after two years old. The reason why I would suggest this is because a child that is around one year old plus they, their, their attention span is very short and they don't really have the muscles to sit on a chair for that long, to concentrate, to lean onto table or, you know, to crawl around on the floor mat and interact with you an extended period of time. You know, they do get tired. There might be people who do not agree with what I say, but that's okay. I mean, if you go for developmental checkup, it doesn't need to be at 2. You can go much earlier. Okay. There are other things to look at, but as a speech and language therapist, what we look at is communication, how many sounds they can say correctly, right. What kind of words and phrases do they have? And so on child below 2. If they really have language delay or disorder, there's not much to be assessed. One of the biggest reasons is because there's not enough things to demonstrate to the parent. The younger a child is, the less structure you can give a child to do therapy. And because they would like to run around, they would like to take breaks, they would like to crawl and roll over and so on. But because we only have 45 minutes or 30 minutes even for speech therapy, we want to get as much out of it as possible. So I think really after two is a lot better in terms of just being a little better for each other's use of time. When should your child actually go seek for a professional evaluation? What we always say is by two, children should be speaking in two word phrases, like some, okay, at least saying like mama open, like eat apple, for instance, drink milk. These kind of two word phrases that aren't absolutely grammatically Correct. That's fine. And at times, most of the time, they aren't perfectly pronounced like articulated, and that's also fine. Okay. If they have speech errors, right. It's still okay. We can be lenient towards it because they're still learning. When should your child go to a speech therapist for an assessment? Is when they cannot. By the time they're two, they're not using two word phrases. Okay. If they're still using one word or pulls your hand or screams or shout or like just vocalizes like ah. Right. By the time the two, they only have like animal sounds, then by all means go for a speech and language evaluation. And how about comprehension? Comprehension is very easy. You can look at questions if your child cannot answer at 2 years old, like yes or no questions. What questions? Like, what is this? What is that? And also like choice questions. Do you want the cookie or the tissue? This kind of thing. Then, yeah, go for assessment and have, have it comprehensively looked at by a therapist, by a professional. It doesn't need to be me. It doesn't need to be someone that is on the Internet and you've seen so on. It doesn't need to be. There's, there's loads of good therapists locally. Okay? I'm talking about this if you're in a developed country. Okay? I don't mean to say this in a way that I'm looking down at other people. I'm not saying that. I'm not trying to. I'm not trying to express that. I'm saying that there are a lot of good therapists around you, okay? You just need to find them. How about if your child is three by three, we will say that she should be, or he should be using three word phrases. Okay, what do I mean by three word phrases? Like mommy, eat apple. Okay. Give me the banana. Okay. And so on. So he's using these phrases at least sometimes. Okay. If not, then go see a speech therapist. Okay. At 3, they should be answering like, who questions. Who's that wearing glasses? Right? These kind of questions should be answered. Where is the remote? On the counter. They should be able to answer that. If not, go see a speech therapist. But up Till now, at 3, yes. Their articulation is not still not perfect, and that's still fine. Okay? But if they cannot do those things, please go see a speech therapist. All right. So what to expect from speech therapy? Speech therapy is not like it is, to an extent, a done for you service. Right. It certainly isn't a DIY service. Like the stuff that I talk about is for parents to learn themselves, right? To equip themselves with skills, skills and, and, and the techniques and methods to, to use at home. That's diy. Speech therapy is more like a done with you. Okay? It's like a journey where, you know, all three parties, the therapist, the child and the parent all work together collaboratively. Teach a child how to communicate. It's not like you should sit outside or unless the therapist thinks so. It's a learning process. And we can only see, as in therapists can only see like one or two sessions a week right now. And each session is around like 30 to 45 minutes. If you're lucky, you get 60. The learning doesn't just stop inside of the clinic room. It needs to go on inside at your house and home. Like at night, in the morning, every day, every waking hour. You're trying to teach your child more about how to communicate. But it's not about like pestering them and quizzing them and asking them and forcing them and pushing them to talk. Right? None of that you should expect from speech therapy is that the parent needs to get, get, get, get themselves involved and learn more about how to do it at home. Okay. And if you're interested about this, we have checklists for parents. You can go to agents of Speech.com checklist. It's a list of tools and toys that we recommend parents to get when they're just started to do home therapy. Okay. If you have any questions about this short video, whether you agree or disagree doesn't matter. Just put in the comment section and we have. We can have a friendly discussion. Right? So that's it for this video. I'll see you in the next one. Bye. Bye.
